Blocking Malicious DDOS

April 3, 2011 by Garen
Filed under: Website Talk

DDos attacks ( The Best Web Hosting Service )-Parents will go for an extra mile in making sure that their baby are vaccinated and immune to disease. Riders will do anything to make their big bikes well-oiled and in top condition. Entrepreneurs would hire the best and the brightest of all managers to manage their firms. And so are web designers and programmers. They will make sure that safety nets are raised up to prevent malicious and unwanted wares in compromising their sites. Yet even if all people mentioned above would take the extra mile in safeguarding the things precious to them, time and time again hostile forces would attack them, one way or another. And the worst thing is that some of these forces doesn’t seem hostile on the outside, but when the crisis started to rear its ugly head, that’s where the red signal light blinks on and off.

Websites are not immune to these crisis. Just because of a simple traffic in the internet, it can cause the site to crash. We call it as DOS attack, Denial of Service attack, or DDOS attack, Distributed Denial of Service attack, which is a stronger version. It means an attempt at a source, or server, to make it unavailable to the intended users. But how does DDOS attack occurs? By knowing how this work, we can easily create a solution in countering such attacks, or rather preventing such attacks to happen.

To clearly see the whole picture, here’s a detailed example. Supposed that you’ll want to use Wikipedia. You’ll use your browser to connect to Wikipedia. But how? Simple. Your browser will send a request through your ISP, and that request will arrive to the designated web server. Your browser will wait for the server to respond. The server, in turn, will accept your request, and connects you to Wikipedia. But what if there are tens of thousands of you visiting the site, and all at the same time? A traffic will now occur. Of course, you will be routed to other routes before you’ll arrive to the said site, to prevent the site from crashing down. But what if the other routes are also occupied by others because of the same request? What happens is that the site, being exhausted in answering the request all at the same time, crash.

One good example is a customer support agent answering queries. With a high volume of phone calls, he can still manage to answer all calls since such calls are queued chronologically. But what happen if he’s not using any phones, but rather is talking to all, face to face, and all at the same time? The agent will break apart, psychologically, and will have to stop the service itself. Such is the situation of DDOS attacks.

So, how do we avoid it? There are several ways on preventing it. First, by putting up firewall, so that request will be screened out. Most of DDOS attacks are usually done by a user using compromise/infected device in generating request to the said server. Second, routers. Routers like Cisco has Cisco IOS that has features that prevent flooding. Third, having a clean pipes. These acts as a gate that separates good and bad traffic. Fourth, implementing bandwidth management like using NetFlow and IPFIX data. These tools will help your site regulate request thereby preventing clogs in the traffic.

There are more ways on how to prevent such attacks, but the above points mentioned are the most recommended in dealing with DDOS attacks.

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